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A true master of fiction, a writer the New Yorker has called "probably the greatest living writer of short stories in the English language," brings his considerable gifts to non-fiction in this brilliant collection of essays. Marked with Trevor's deft irony and subtle gifts for illuminating characters,
Excursions in the Real World collects more than two dozen deeply personal memoirs of the artistic life.
Book Description
These autobiographical tales are about people and places, personal fascinations and enthusiasms, that have remained snagged in William Trevor's memory over the years.
He writes here of childhood and youth, of his schools and university days, his early life in Dublin and London, of Ireland and of England. Most of the portraits are of people who have either been well known to him or casually met a few are drawn from the imagination, though the subjects are real. Some of the landscapes are equally familiar to him, while others are merely glimpsed: Persia in the early seventies, a Swiss valley, County Cork in the thirties, a Gloucestershire village, Venice in November, New York and San Francisco.
"Places do not die as people do," William Trevor writes in his introduction, "but they often changed so fundamentally that little is left of what once they were. The landscape of the Nire valley that spreads over a northern part of Country Waterford is timeless, but the Dublin remembered here is the Dublin of several pasts, and elsewhere among these impressions there is that same dichotomy."Affectionate, poignant and often gently humorous, these essays are an expansion of a writer's notebook. Such excursions into memory convey the essence of William Trevor's world — read in conjunction with Lucy Willis's graceful illustrations, they illuminate unforgettably the background to this celebrated novels and short stories.
From the Trade Paperback edition.
Customer Reviews:
The Autobiography of a Contemporary Master.......2000-04-04
Admirers of Trevor's masterly fiction will enjoy these incisive, witty, heartbreaking essays revisiting his youth and early adulthood. The short piece about his parents is probably the most moving thing he's ever written. Most writers use autobiography to settle scores; Trevor uses it to give shape to the life of memory--a shape, in its own way, just as artful and just as true as the shape he gives to the life of his fiction.
Average customer rating:
- Da
- A must read...
- Nostalgic and loveable.
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Home Before Night: Memories of an Irish Time and Place
Hugh Leonard
Manufacturer: Atheneum
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ASIN: 0689110472 |
Customer Reviews:
Da.......2007-01-03
Hugh Leonard, an Irish playwright and journalist, was born in Dublin in 1926. He spent fourteen years working for the Irish Civil Service, before he was able to concentrate fully on his writing. Leonard - known in 'real' life as John Keyes Byrne - received the Tony Award in 1977 for the play "Da", which was largely based on his own youth and his relationship with his adoptive father. (It was also made into a movie, with Martin Sheen playing the Hugh Leonard role). "Home Before Night" tells part of his life story in prose form.
This is a hugely enjoyable book - it's very easily read, though some might say it's a touch sentimental. Parts are told from Leonard's own perspective ("I choked and retched, and the wind knifed through my wet clothes"), though other parts are written about Jack ("Jack's da was too slow to take Sonny's meaning"). It's a bit strange to begin with, but it doesn't interfere with the story at all. In fact, some of my favourite parts involve Jack and his pet dog - also called Jack ! Not surprisingly, it's also a little old-fashioned in places - though it's worth pointing out that certain words and phrases didn't mean then what they mean today. Definitely recommended, as is its follow-up "Out After Dark".
A must read..........2001-10-22
Hugh Leonard writing heals the soul the way a crackling fire warms a body on a winters night. His skill at capturing a life in Dalkey, a place I am so familiar with albeit a more modern one, is unique, setting in place a slice of historical life for generations to come. His settings and story capture a more simple Dublin yet one that we are all familiar with. It breathes life into a lovely town set in a beautiful part of Ireland. This book is my favourite...ever.
Nostalgic and loveable........2000-08-18
This is the tale of a boy growing up in Dalkey in the 1940's and 50's. It is autobiographical and gives an intimate view of Leonard and the influences that effected him in his youth. The book is a collection of cameos of life in a small Irish village just south of Dublin. Dalkey is now part of the greater Dublin Sprawl, but this book captures a time when it was only a village. Leonard regales us with hilarious tales, the dog who attacks priests and policemen, his job interview in a pub where he learns the one great truth in life ( in a pub toilet incoming traffic has right of way). If you know Leonard through his plays (Da and a Life especially) you will have seen some of this material. Even so, the impeccable writing and a real feel for prose makes this book worth a read.
Average customer rating:
- Great Night Table Reading...
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A Dublin Girl: Growing Up in the 1930's
Elaine Crowley
Manufacturer: Soho Press
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Leaving Ireland
ASIN: 1569471126 |
Book Description
Growing up in a one-room tenement with her parents and two siblings, Elaine Crowley became a shrewd observer: of the neighborhood within the Liberties, of street life, of poverty, of her father's infidelity, and of her mother's effort to end his affair. Her memories create a moving portrait of a 1930s Irish family contending with the pain of adversity and loss, and how love can overcome both.
Customer Reviews:
Great Night Table Reading..........1999-05-03
Elaine Crowley weaved a wonderful story that did combine humor and pathos in a way that left the reader hopeful...to the very end. I imagine Ms. Crowley as being an extremely grounded and delightful person, in spite of the "hard times" she endured during her childhood years. And isn't that always the "best" gift we can give to ourselves/offer to others? Rather than staying stuck in her own bitterness, anger, resentment and/or rage---it's nice to see an author "get into it" (when "it" isn't very pleasant at all!), but come through it victoriously. She's someone I would have liked to know personally; her family is no doubt extremely fortunate to have her. Mary in Northville, MI
Book Description
In the spirit of Pete Hamil's SNOW IN AUGUST, the author of four New York Times bestsellers, including REPORT FROM ENGINE COMPANY 82, creates a moving memoir of growing up Irish Catholic and poor in New York City.
Growing up on the rough-and-tumble streets of New York City in the 1940s and '50s, Dennis Smith was a "tenement kid," dirt-poor, Irish-Catholic, and missing a father. According to his mother, who fought desperately to keep her children on the right track, his father had a disability which required him to stay in a hospital and have no visitors. By his early teens, Smith had become an angry rebel, and was involved with drugs, alcohol, and various kinds of criminal mischief. Just as his life was about to spin out of control, he learned the truth behind his father's absence, and begun a difficult process of personal healing and spiritual renewal. Told in first-person narrative, this lyrical remembrance is a powerful odyssey of one young man coming of age in a confusing and sometimes hostile world.
Customer Reviews:
SUCH A WONDERFUL MEMORY!.......2002-04-26
This shows the greatest love in the world: a mother's love for her son. As a result of this love, her son has a great desire to please his mother and a need for her to be proud of him.====Growing up in a New York City neighborhood during the 1940's and 1950's is very difficult for Dennis because of peer pressure and also because he is very resentful and resistive of all authority in his life, but grow up he does!====You cannot read this well-written narrative without some laughter and some tears,but you do come away from it with some understanding of the universal mother-child love.====If you read and loved Frank McCourt's "Angela's Ashes", you will certainly love this wonderful memoir. Good for you, Dennis Smith!!!
THANKS FOR THE MEMORY.......2001-08-23
I READ THIS BOOK IN ONE WEEK END WHILE VISITING MY DAUGHTER. IT WAS A DELITE FOR ME . ALTHOUGH RAISED IN THE CITY OF CHICAGO , AND BEING FEMALE, THE TIME PERIOD MATCHED AND SO DID THE FELLOWS THAT GREW UP IN MY NEIGHBORHOOD. WE WERE EITHER IRISH, ITALIAN OR JEWISH. HE REALLY TAKES ONE INSIDE THIS LITTLE FELLOW AND WOULD CERTAINLY GIVE ANY MOTHER WITH A REBEL SON HOPE. I LOVED IT!
An American "Angela's Ashes".......2001-05-10
Dennis Smith's "A Song for Mary" is a powerful, emotionally gripping memoir that is one of the finest published in recent years. Along with Pete Hamill's "A Drinking Life", and Frank McCourt's "Angela's Ashes", it belongs in the first rank of great memoirs written by Irish-American authors. Speaking of Hamill, it is a Manhattan version of "A Drinking Life", replete with the chaos and woe associated with growing up poor and Irish in New York City. Smith's vivid prose conjurs up the Irish-American neighobrhood that was once the East Side of Midtown Manhattan. We see a young, bright Dennis Smith almost drawn into a life of petty crime, yet saved by love and devotion from his mother and local Catholic priests. Eventually the book ends positively, with his arrival as the rookie fireman at Engine Company 82, setting the stage for the events he described two decades ago in his bestselling memoir "Report from Engine Company 82". I am surprised that this fine book hasn't earned the wide audience it deserves. Anyone who has fallen in love with Frank McCourt's "Angela's Ashes" should also fall in love with Dennis Smith's "A Song for Mary".
A masterpiece!.......2001-02-24
Encore, encore. . . what a beautiful, wonderful story. I did not want this book to end I enjoyed it so thoroughly. What a brave and determined woman Mary was, and such an incredibly loving mother. This book is such a touching tribute to her, as well as a gut-wrenching look at growing up dirt poor and finding your own way in life. I loved this book and highly recommend it. Bravo Mr. Smith!
A Mother's Loving Song.......1999-12-23
This book brought back many memories of growing up on the East Side of Manhattan in the early 50's. It's a poignant, yet loving look at "coming of age". I highly recommend it...
Book Description
The anti-busing riots of 1974 forever changed Southie, Boston's working class Irish community, branding it as a violent, racist enclave. Michael Patrick MacDonald grew up in Southie's Old Colony housing project. He describes the way this world within a world felt to the troubled yet keenly gifted observer he was even as a child: "[as if] we were protected, as if the whole neighborhood was watching our backs for threats, watching for all the enemies we could never really define." But the threats-poverty, drugs, a shadowy gangster world-were real. MacDonald lost four of his siblings to violence and poverty. All Souls is heart-breaking testimony to lives lost too early, and the story of how a place so filled with pain could still be "the best place in the world." We meet Ma, Michael's mini-skirted, accordian-playing, usually single mother who cares for her children-there are eventually ten-through a combination of high spirits and inspired "getting over." And there are Michael's older siblings-Davey, sweet artist-dreamer; Kevin, child genius of scam; and Frankie, Golden Gloves boxer and neighborhood hero-whose lives are high-wire acts played out in a world of poverty and pride. But too soon Southie becomes a place controlled by resident gangster Whitey Bulger, later revealed to be an FBI informant even as he ran the drug culture that Southie supposedly never had. It was a world primed for the escalation of class violence-and then, with deadly and sickening inevitability, of racial violence that swirled around forced busing. MacDonald, eight years old when the riots hit, gives an explosive account of the asphalt warfare. He tells of feeling "part of it all, part of something bigger than I'd ever imagined, part of something that was on the national news every night."
Customer Reviews:
I mean...........2007-08-25
This guy had a LIFE. I don't envy him and I'm happy that he has come out on top...as far as an "Angela's Ashes"...not even close. I read this after a "true story" about a guy that worked for Whitey Bulger in Southie...I thought this would be another perspective and I looooved Angela's Ashes...I just wasn't hooked to any of the family except for the author...it was an interesting read but not that emotional or moving...again, I'm so glad he made it through his awful life but I don't think I'd make my friends read it...
Winged Cockroaches Drowning in Sprite.......2007-07-07
An ancient slander against the Irish holds that they would sell their own children for money to buy whiskey and damn if that isn't exactly what one of Michael MacDonald's sisters tries to do in "All Souls", MacDonald's didactic tale of coming of age in the Old Colony projects in South Boston. The sister in question wants to sell her child for money to buy crack, not whiskey, but it's the same difference in a case of life imitating stereotype.
In Old Colony, where "everyone is Irish or claims to be", the MacDonald family is, as they might say in Donegal, callanach and barbartha (rowdy and uncivilized), even when measured by shanty project standards. The family matriarch (there is no patriarch), "Ma", had ten children by three men. She supplements the welfare check by playing the accordion in taverns and her kids run wild in the streets, with predictable results-crime, drug addiction, mental illness, and suicide. The residents consider the project "the greatest place in the world", and pretend to live by something called the "Southie Code"-all for one and one for all, don't steal from your neighbor, throw the bums a dime, and above all, don't snitch. Of course, they rob each other blind, sell each other dope, and kill each other with distressing regularity. The only Southie Commandment they all seem to honor is "Thou Shall Not Snitch", since the police are the bad guys and the criminals, who have supplanted the missing fathers, the criminals are the neighborhood heroes.
"All Souls" is brisk and thoughtful. The book has value because it shows that urban poverty will produce the same social plagues regardless of race. It compares favorably to Claude Brown's classic about growing up amid the squalor and violence of Harlem, "Manchild in the Promised Land". High praise indeed. The narrative, however, is seriously flawed. One has to wonder how a five year-old MacDonald can so vividly recall visiting a brother in a mental hospital, or how an eight year-old MacDonald can so meticulously recount the Southie anti-busing riots, when he was "filled with the spirit of rebellion". The writing also suffers from wrenching, abrupt shifts. For example, one brother, an athlete, a boxer on the verge of making it, a man who wouldn't drink beer in public and who admonishes those that do because it sets a bad example for neighborhood kids, this man is suddenly shot dead while robbing an armored car because somehow, unannounced to the reader, he had developed a "major cocaine addiction".
Winged cockroaches drowning in Sprite? Mr. MacDonald finds twenty dead cockroaches (ubiquitous in the project) floating in cup of Sprite
and realizes that they have wings:
"They all floated in the cup with their useless
wings spread out. I stared at them for a good
long time wondering if they didn't know how to
use their wings, or if they just didn't know
they had them, until it was too late to save
themselves".
As metaphors go, that is about as sappy as it gets. Mr. MacDonald did, though, spread his wings and save himself from the Sprite of the project mentality.
A Gripping, Informative Memoir.......2007-04-10
I've never been to Boston, my upbringing was about as suburban as you can get, and I loved "All Souls." It's the memoirs of Michael Patrick MacDonald, who grew up in the largely Irish-Catholic South Boston ("Southie") in the tumultuous 60s and 70s. The Publishers Weekly review summed up the book better than I could, so I will just add some of my own observations.
1.) "All Souls" is instrumental in publicizing a largely-neglected aspect of American history- the Boston busing riots. Aside from a few passing references to it in history textbooks, I'm not aware of any other book where the topic is explored from the viewpoint of someone who was actually there. Basically, William Garrity, a federal judge in Boston, found that the schools in Boston were segregated, and ordered that students should be bused to achieve an equal racial balance. The protest in South Boston was fierce. The people there resented the decision, and threw rocks at the first buses carrying black students into the South Boston area. If students were in a neighborhood assigned to be bused to the predominately black schools, then their parents would send them to a private school if they could afford it. Many times the students would simply drop out. When the busing started, fights broke out between the black and white students. Racism was rampant in South Boston, and many used the "n word" with abandon. Yet not all of the opposition to busing was racially motivated. Mostly the parents were concerned for the safety of their children, and resented the tight-knit community being forcibly torn apart.
2.) Another fascinating aspect of "All Souls" was the code of silence that enveloped Southie until very recently. If there were murders or suicides, you didn't mention it to the police. The myth was "in Southie, everyone looks out for each other." And to a certain extent that was true- it was a tight-knit community. The problem is that when someone was in real trouble, such as getting shot in a botched robbery, no one would come forward to give information that could save lives and rectify the situation. Whitey Bulger was largely responsible for perpetuating the code of silence and the "people look out for each other" myth. And he could say this, since he was comfortably living in a mansion, while most of the people in Southie were in public housing projects.
3.) The author's portrayal of poverty is fascinating and heartbreaking. We can see the effects of the breakdown of the family unit firsthand through the author's eyes. Most families had no father to look after them, and many of the mothers were on welfare. MacDonald's mother, Helen King, or "Ma" as he calls her, is one tough cookie. She managed to raise 10 kids on her own without a father- and the only income she received was from welfare and whatever tips she could scrape by playing the accordion at pubs. Most mothers were not as dedicated as this one, unfortunately. MacDonald never preaches about the issue, and there is much in here for people of all political persuasions to think about.
I love it how the book begins and ends with the author, now a grown man, attending a meeting of the newly-formed South Boston Vigil Group on All-Souls Day. They are people from all over South Boston who are ready to break the silence, and name the names of loved ones lost to murder, drugs, or suicide. Fans of gripping biography, social history, Irish-American history, and American history in general will not want to miss this.
inspiring.......2007-03-29
Even though there are pages upon pages of great reviews for this book, I had to add my two cents.
Having grown up as a unidentified upper-middle class American in the 80's, searching for connection with community and my family's origins, I found this book to be inspiring. Macdonald's recollection of his community and pride in his flawed family induced me to appreciate my own average life, as well as appreciate those full of tragedy.
Amazing, enraging, beautiful, heartbraking,inspiring .......2007-03-26
I can't say enough about this book,it is a must read for every single American citizen that has ever been foolish enough to believe that our so called government does not promote and encourage acts of violence against the most vulnerable communities in this country.
Book Description
In this engaging and reflective essay, Jerry Griswold examines the unique qualities of childhood experience and their reappearance as frequent themes in children's literature. Surveying dozens of classic and popular works for the young -- from Heidi and The Wizard of Oz to Beatrix Potter and Harry Potter -- Griswold demonstrates how great children's writers succeed because of their uncanny ability to remember what it feels like to be a kid: playing under tables, shivering in bed on a scary night, arranging miniature worlds with toys, zooming around as caped superheroes, listening to dolls talk.
No softheaded discussion of kids' "cute" convictions nor a developmentally-focused critique of their "immature" beliefs, Feeling Like a Kid boldly and honestly identifies the ways in which the young think and see the world in a manner different from that of adults. Written by a leading scholar, prize-winning author, and frequent contributor to the Los Angeles Times, this extensively illustrated book will fascinate general readers as well as all those who study childhood and children's literature.
Customer Reviews:
A perfect book for undergraduates.......2007-04-10
For anyone looking for a short book to accompany a college course in children's lit, this book is it. It is simply written, not marred by abstruse critical jargon, and discusses a host of interesting things worth covering in an undergraduate course. And Johns Hopkins did a beautiful job with the book itself. It's a little work of art, the kind of thing students will keep.
Pretty Worthless.......2007-03-28
Griswold's treatment of the books is disappointingly shallow. He makes a number of undeniably true observations about what children like, how they behave, what they seek out, etc - and then notes that various well-known books satisfy those desires. E.g., children like to feel snug, like to enclose themselves in small spaces - and guess what? that's exactly what you find in various children's books. Griswold doesn't devote much time to asking "why?" or to explaining the significance of any of these desires. The book is enjoyable but by the time you're done reading the author's very superficial discussion, your reaction is, "well, I could have told you all that off the top of my head."
What a little gem of a book!.......2006-12-17
This absolutely wonderful book illuminates the world of childhood like no other. Griswold examines dozens of childrens* stories and discovers certain qualities common to all of them--snugness,scariness, smallness, lightness, and aliveness. He shows us how these qualities are central to a childs perception of the world. Lucidly written, convincingly argued, profusely illustrated, this is a book that every parent who reads stories to his or her child should have. And its* a gorgeous book as well--an example of the bookmaking art at its best. *(the apostrophe doesn*t seem to work on this computer--Im not illiterate)
Average customer rating:
- Emotionally Stirring By A Most Literate Writer
- Happiness and sorrows of a truly literary person
- A Grief Understood
- A Grief Understood
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Crossing Highbridge: A Memoir of Irish America (Irish Studies)
Maureen Waters
Manufacturer: Syracuse University Press
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New York Irish
ASIN: 0815606826 |
Customer Reviews:
Emotionally Stirring By A Most Literate Writer.......2001-06-21
I could relate to nearly everything that Miss Waters wrote about in Crossing Highbridge, because I came from that Irish Catholic enclave, I knew the Waters family long ago, and I went to Sacred Heart with Maureen's sister, Agnes.
Maureen Waters is a gifted writer who combines history, philosophy, religion, and the socio-econimic conditions in a working class environment in the 1940's and 1950's, with utter grace, and at the same time, the reader can experience some strong emotions of saddness and joy.
Happiness and sorrows of a truly literary person.......2001-06-21
I was able to identify with nearly everything Miss Waters wrote about her Irish Catholic upbringing in Highbridge, because I too came from the same place, and I knew her sister Agnes many, many years ago. However, if I had not had the privilege of knowing Maureen and her literary family, I would still have been able to appreciate the writer's gift of style where she combined gracefully, history, philosophy, religion along with the socioeconomic conditions of the 1940's and 1950's growing up in Highbridge.
A Grief Understood.......2001-06-01
This profoundly moving memoir of growing up Irish/Catholic/female in the midcentury Bronx began with the author's need to understand the loss of her son to accidental death by drugs and alcohol. As she puts it, "the drive to piece together cause and effect was a belief that I had far more power than I actually did for good or ill." She sifts the past out of psychological necessity, desperate, guilty, and finds ordinary treasure: in human characters - her father, an immigrant from Sligo, her mother from Mayo, a feisty and lovable little sister, Agnes, and, above all, in her beautiful and enigmatic lost child of the flaming red hair, Brian Patrick - and also in their brave and lonely human places (Highbridge on Hudson, Long Island). She looks back for clues to her loss from the perspective of a divorced single mother trying to juggle children and hold her own in academe (she's now a professor of English). Memory sifted through the prism of such luminous prose and honest emotion offers a gentle and moving consolation to this reader. The story of the author's Catholic journey, from insider - the parish was Sacred Heart - to outsider is told with devastating brevity. I'll never forget the final image of women's exclusion. It rings so true. The abyss is present in Waters' world, but to me this is a book of hope
A Grief Understood.......2001-06-01
This beautiful memoir of growing up Irish-Catholic-female in the Bronx at midcentury began with the author's tragic loss of one of her sons to an accidental death from drugs and alcohol. In order to survive herself, she must understand: "The drive to piece together cause and effect was a belief that I had far more power than I actually did for good or ill." The bereaved mother, who is also a professor of English, sifts her past for answers. She uncovers the treasure of human characters (her father, Daniel Waters, an immigrant from Sligo, her mother from Mayo; her rebel little sister, Agnes) in their brave and lonely human settlement (Highbridge on the Hudson). She looks back on the cost of parenting alone as a divorced young mother and trying to hold her own in academe. The consolation that memory - and Waters' luminous prose - makes for her and for this reader is profoundly moving. The story of her Catholic journey, in particular, the movement from insider - the parish was Sacred Heart - to outsider, is especially strong: she tells it with a devastating brevity and one final image that I'll never forget. It rings so true. This is a courageous book about loss in which you come to see that what remains is, after all, a matter of life understood and hope.
Amazon.com
The son of a German mother and an Irish father, Hugo Hamilton grew up in Dublin in the 1950s wearing "lederhosen and Aran sweaters, smelling of rough wool and new leather, Irish on top and German below." His family spoke both German and Irish, but English was strictly forbidden--even uttering a few words of the cursed language was enough to earn an often brutal punishment from their father, a staunch Irish nationalist. His father maintained that "your home is your language" and insisted that they be a model Irish family and an example for others to follow. Hamilton and his siblings were not even permitted to play with children who did not speak Irish exclusively--a particular problem in a country where English is the primary language. Ironically, he was taunted mercilessly for his German heritage and children jeered him with cries of "Eichmann" and "Heil Hitler." He was even put on "trial" once by a gang of kids who sentenced him death by snowball firing squad. This confusing quest to discover his identity and to gain an understanding of his family history is at the heart of The Speckled People, a profoundly touching and beautifully written memoir.
His parents' secrecy concerning their own pasts only exacerbated his frustration, forcing Hamilton to cling to fragments of information gleaned secretly from hidden photographs and buried family relics. Written from the perspective of a child, Hamilton captures his feelings of confusion, guilt, and fear convincingly and with much humor and insight. Full of poetic passages, sharp observations, and the kind of subtle epiphanies that are best expressed by a child, the book is a joy to read. "When you're small you know nothing and when you grow up there are things you don't want to know," he writes. This memoir is Hamilton's attempt to reconcile the two. --Shawn Carkonen
Book Description
The childhood world of Hugo Hamilton is a confused place: His father, a brutal Irish nationalist, demands his children speak Gaelic at home whilst his mother, a softly spoken German emigrant who escaped Nazi Germany at the beginning of the war, encourages them to speak German. All Hugo wants to do is speak English. English is, after all, what the other children in Dublin speak. English is what they use when they hunt down Hugo (or 'Eichmann' as they dub him) in the streets of Dublin, and English is what they use when they bring him to trial and execute him at a mock seaside court. Out of this fear and confusion Hugo tries to build a balanced view of the world, to turn the twisted logic of what he is told into truth. It is a journey that ends in liberation but not before this little boy has uncovered the dark and long-buried secrets that lie at the bottom of his parents' wardrobe. In one of the finest books to have emerged from Ireland since Patrick McCabe's THE BUTCHER BOY and Seamus Deane's READING IN THE DARK, acclaimed novelist Hugo Hamilton has finally written his own story.
Customer Reviews:
Can't put it down.......2006-11-18
Memoirs are almost always interesting but this one is like nothing else I had ever read. Truly touching and endlessly interesting, this book has something for everyone. If you have ever felt like an "outsider" you will appreciate Hugo's plight. Can't stop ready it. It was a joy until the very last page.
wow!.......2005-04-28
okay... this book is absolutely gorgeous - It is sweet,deep,and dark...an original story. it reads like a beautiful poem -i am so happy to read a new book by an author who writes so well... thank you, Hugo!
Every curse falls back on its author.".......2005-01-07
This is a magnificent story of the author's growing up in Ireland.It takes place mainly after WW2 and until the mid-seventies.The son of an fanitically nationalistic Irish father who doesn't want to give up the past, and a German mother who is haunted by her past of growing up in Nazi Germany.
The author shows us the tremendous pressures of trying to get along when you are different from others in your community and country.This problem exists everywhere and we learn that it also occurs even in Ireland.This family lived with it as a central issue at all times and no matter how hard they tried,they could never get away from it.I don't think I have ever read a book that so clearly defined the issues and struggles that had to be faced.
Not only has the author described the struggles his family faced he also gives us a great deal of insight into the culture,thinking,perceptions,anguish,and the effect that the past has on the personality and feelings encountered when one is different.
Ireland is a very fascinating country and like no other.One never ceases to be amazed by what one learns by reading about its history and its people;and this book is no exception.
Several lines that really struck me were:
"Some things are not good to know in Ireland."
"We serve neither King nor Kaiser."
"My father says the Irish can't live on imagination forever."
"He doesn't want the song about immigration to go on forever."
"Ireland unfree shall never be at peace."
"Maybe there was no failure in Ireland,only bad luck,and
maybe there was no bad luck in Germany,only failure."
"Nelson's head was on the ground and the dust of the empire
was all around."
"When you're small you know nothing and when you grow up there
are things you don't want to know."
And finally,one that sums up the story:
"I'm walking on the wall and nobody can stop me."
The author's skill in the use of language is a whole order of magnitude higher than so much we see today;but still in a class with several of his Irish compatriots.What wonderful stuff this small country produces.
Between languages.......2004-10-01
I found The Speckled People after encountering a fascinating article by Hugo Hamilton on the "Loneliness of Being German". Similar to the article, the book immediately struck a chord with me. Those living within and without their own language will find a special connection to this book. Language as the identification of "home" and "country" and "language wars" are explored here in a rather exceptional way - through the voice and outlook of a growing child. Like a patchwork quilt the vignette chapters of the book come together for the reader to form an exquisitely drawn portrait. Hamilton's family is pictured against the backdrop of their Irish reality of poverty and want in the fifties and sixties. Complexities are accentuated by his dual identity as a child of an Irish nationalist father and a German mother who left Germany after the war.
While The Speckled People is an intimately personal chronicle of his youth, Hamilton's story has significance far beyond the autobiography genre. There are advantages and challenges in using the language of a child. On the one hand, experiences can be conveyed in a direct and innocent way. Johannes (Hugo) has not yet learned to query all he observes: "When you're small you know nothing". He is a sensitive and perceptive child who intuits that there are more untold dramas in the family. "You can inherit a secret without even knowing what it is." On the other hand, it may be difficult to maintain the language as the boy's capacity to analyze and reflect becomes more pronounced with age. Hamilton succeeds admirably in keeping his style consistent even where he integrates numerous events from the wider world as they become relevant to the young boy. As you settle into his style, the narrative becomes deeply absorbing.
The experiences of life under Nazi rule as part of an anti-Nazi family, continue to haunt his mother. Her painful memories are conveyed to the son in small doses, like selected scenes from a black and white movie in which she had a part. Nonetheless, she is homesick for her native country and all things German. Books, souvenirs and toys arrive regularly resulting in outbursts of happy laughter. Johannes records his mother's mood swings expressed through either laughter or primarily mental withdrawal and silence.
His father feels more Irish than anybody around them. He insists on preserving Irish culture and on "freeing" the Irish people from British influences. His children become "his weapon" against the enemy. He forbids the family to speak English. The children tend to "live" in German as their mother has difficulties speaking Irish. The Irish language has to be protected even if it means losing business. This can mean that cheques are not accepted from people who cannot spell Ó hUrmoltaigh - Hamilton in Irish. The language is your home, "your country is your language", he insists - it identifies who you are. The pressure on the children to speak German and Irish at home sets them apart from people in Dublin at the time. There, English was the preferred language. The children suffer from this enforced isolation. The neighbourhood bullies, responding to their otherness and German identity call them "Nazi", "Hitler" or "Eichmann". They attack them whenever the opportunity arises. While Johannes repeats to himself and to his mother "I am not a Nazi", he does not defend himself against the assaults. One of the rules of the house is to adopt a form of pacifist resistance, the "silent negative " and not to become part of the "fist people". As Johannes grows up, he understandably rebels increasingly against these strictures. In the end, he discovers his own way out of all the identify confusion, his anger and pain.
The Speckled People is a memoir like no other. Any comparison with other Irish memoirs would seem inappropriate to me. While Hamilton chronicles his childhood and growing up, themes and issues beyond the personal play a fundamental role. In particular his exploration of the complexities of "language" as "home" and "country" gives this book added richness and depth. [Friederike Knabe, Ottawa Canada]
Almost an Angela's Ashes.......2003-12-08
The cover picture and the packaging are obviously attempting to ride on the coat tails of the phenomonal success of "Angela's Ashes." Which is okay in this case, because there are many similarities, and also because this book is almost as good. Almost. It's very close. Which is to say: it's still better than just about any other memoir you could get your hands on. This is a most charming, most intuitive, most page-turning read. I loved it. You probably will too.
Average customer rating:
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An Irish Country Christmas
Alice Taylor
Manufacturer: St Martins Pr
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Customer Reviews:
A wonderful Christmas book.......1999-11-23
This is my favorite book about Christmas. Ms. Taylor makes you feel like you are part of her Irish family, and makes Christmas in Ireland seem like a very special place.
Book Description
When Barbara Hanawalt's acclaimed history The Ties That Bound first appeared, it was hailed for its unprecedented research and vivid re-creation of medieval life. David Levine, writing in The New York Times Book Review, called Hanawalt's book "as stimulating for the questions it asks as for the answers it provides" and he concluded that "one comes away from this stimulating book with the same sense of wonder that Thomas Hardy's Angel Clare felt [:] 'The impressionable peasant leads a larger, fuller, more dramatic life than the pachydermatous king.'" Now, in Growing Up in Medieval London, Hanawalt again reveals the larger, fuller, more dramatic life of the common people, in this instance, the lives of children in London. Bringing together a wealth of evidence drawn from court records, literary sources, and books of advice, Hanawalt weaves a rich tapestry of the life of London youth during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Much of what she finds is eye opening. She shows for instance that--contrary to the belief of some historians--medieval adults did recognize and pay close attention to the various stages of childhood and adolescence. For instance, manuals on childrearing, such as "Rhodes's Book of Nurture" or "Seager's School of Virtue," clearly reflect the value parents placed in laying the proper groundwork for a child's future. Likewise, wardship cases reveal that in fact London laws granted orphans greater protection than do our own courts. Hanawalt also breaks ground with her innovative narrative style. To bring medieval childhood to life, she creates composite profiles, based on the experiences of real children, which provide a more vivid portrait than otherwise possible of the trials and tribulations of medieval youths at work and at play. We discover through these portraits that the road to adulthood was fraught with danger. We meet Alison the Bastard Heiress, whose guardians married her off to their apprentice in order to gain control of her inheritance. We learn how Joan Rawlyns of Aldenham thwarted an attempt to sell her into prostitution. And we hear the unfortunate story of William Raynold and Thomas Appleford, two mercer's apprentices who found themselves forgotten by their senile master, and abused by his wife. These composite portraits, and many more, enrich our understanding of the many stages of life in the Middle Ages. Written by a leading historian of the Middle Ages, these pages evoke the color and drama of medieval life. Ranging from birth and baptism, to apprenticeship and adulthood, here is a myth-shattering, innovative work that illuminates the nature of childhood in the Middle Ages.
Customer Reviews:
Dry, lifeless.......2004-03-28
Growing Up in Medieval London: The Experience of Childhood in History by Barbara A. Hanawalt. Not recommended.
University of Minnesota history professor Barbara Hanawalt uses an array of primary sources, from court cases and Hustings Wills to contemporary books of advice, to show how typical children grew up in London during the 14th and 15th centuries, from an abbreviated childhood to early marriages and lengthy apprenticeships. Between chapters full of facts taken from her sources, she interjects composite fictions, from a schoolboy's drowning to a case of marriage-related blackmail.
Hanawalt covers such topics as living conditions, sanitation, family and social networks, apprentice and servant contracts, relationships between apprentices and masters and servants and masters, orphans, wards, marriage, and birth. She also tries to define how an individual moved from one stage of life to another, with an apprentice or servant contract marking the transition from childhood to adolescence and the end of apprentice or a marriage marking the end of adolescence.
Although Hanawalt provides an excellent overview of how young people moved through life and the different expectations of males and females, there is little life in these pages beyond the facts, despite the fictional interjections (one of which turns the mythical "Robin Hood" into an urban blackmailer!). One comes away with a sense of a very ordered society, where citizens' orphans are under the protection of the city through the mayor and chancellor and the guilds regulate dress, behaviour, and other potential expressions of individuality. There is little detail, here, however, beyond the bare facts to show how children spent their days, how they felt about their parents and society, and what they aspired to. There is more about the contractual nature of apprenticeship and servanthood than about the day-to-day life of an apprentice, leaving the reader feeling that there are critical pieces missing about what "growing up" meant to the medieval mind. In many cases, Hanawalt will draw broad conclusions about how a particular situation might be treated based on only one or two records, although they may not be representative.
Hanawalt occasionally makes odd or even ludicrous statements or comments. For example, she says, "Ratus ratus, a scientific name with a redundant ring" unnecessarily, as this adds nothing of interest. Not only that, but the scientific name is Rattus rattus, and, although Hanawalt calls it the "common house rat," it's more typically known as the black rat. On p. 42, she says, "Growing up in fourteenth- and fifteenth-century London could not have been the same experience as growing up in more modern London." This statement is so laughably self-evident even to a non-historian, non-Londoner such as myself that one wonders what Hanawalt was thinking to include it. Later, she talks about "pox, sweating sickness, flux . . ." without defining what was meant by those terms. (Is "sweating sickness" a generic term for unspecified fevers, is it a specific fever, or is it something entirely different?) She asserts that "females have a biological advantage in surviving disease" but does not provide the basis for this claim or cite a source for it. (I am curious as to what this advantage is.)
Some of Hanawalt's examples do not seem related to the point. She says that "a visit to a physician might have been more of a hazard than a help," then cites a case where "the child was not cured." Logically, the supporting example should have illustrated how a physician's treatment actually harmed the patient. She notes that "prostitutes, female servants, and singlewomen were at risk for conceiving illegitimate children." What is a "singlewoman"? Perhaps this term has a specific medieval meaning, but without a definition, it sounds like she is saying unmarried women were at risk of having illegitimate children. At one point, she notes that "cases of forced prostitution of vulnerable young teenage girls can be multiplied in the record sources, but the repetition of such sad cases become depressing." Does the reader need to be told this? And, since Hanawalt declares in the introduction that she has "a basic optimism about human nature that comes through," her viewpoint is admittedly skewed.
Undoubtedly, Hanawalt has done her research and made a contribution to our understanding of the workings of London law and society as they affected children and adolescents (however defined). Unfortunately, for the general reader looking for the Middle Ages to come to life, this is not the best place to go.
Diane L. Schirf, 20 March 2004.
Fascinating.......2002-01-23
I found this book by accident in my local bookstore as I was trying to find something on the history of childhood diseases. I am not a professional historian. Nevertheless, although it may sound silly, I literally couldn't put this book down. I read it at one sitting. So few history books give a true picture of what life was like in some earlier era and this book is really illuminating, covering a wide variety of topics, from birth to late adolescence. Because the historical record is a little thin as regards children's experience, the author in some cases must speculate, but always does so reasonably and with support from the data obtained from court proceedings and other sources. I enjoyed the book so much I considered writing the author a personal thank-you letter!
Vivid and carefully researched.......2000-03-04
Growing Up in Medieval London is not only an informative book, but interesting to read. By examining documents which still exist -- medieval court cases, censuses, parish registers, and tax listings -- Barbara Hanawalt reconstructs the lives of children and teenagers in medieval London. She dispels commonly held myths about this period of history -- for example, that medieval people did not recognise childhood as a distinct life stage, or that because of high child mortality they did not become psychologically attached to their offspring. The archival materials that Hanawalt presents tell a different story. Medieval Londoners were careful to protect the well-being of young orphans, and although corporal punishment of children, apprentices and students was tolerated to a degree we would find unacceptable today, cases of physical or sexual abuse were punished by the courts. Children in medieval London were less prone to accidental deaths, as demonstrated by the coroners' records, than children in villages, perhaps because in the close communities in which they were raised neighbours kept a closer watch on children playing in the vicinities of their homes.
Hanawalt addresses the material environment in which young Londoners grew up, and explores the differing experiences of orphans and wards of the court, well-to-do heirs and heiresses, bastards, schoolboys, apprentices and servants. Girls' upbringing and opportunities were not the same as boys, and fewer documents exist to record their lives, but Hanawalt draws attention to those records that can illuminate their experience. This is an innovative, fascinating book for anyone with an interest in the Middle Ages.
Books:
- History: Fiction or Science? (Chronology, No. 1)
- History: Fiction or Science? (Chronology, No. 1)
- History: Fiction or Science? (Chronology, No. 1)
- History: Fiction or Science? (Chronology, No. 1)
- History: Fiction or Science? (Chronology, No. 1)
- History: Fiction or Science? (Chronology, No. 1)
- History: Fiction or Science? (Chronology, No. 1)
- History: Fiction or Science? (Chronology, No. 1)
- History: Fiction or Science? (Chronology, No. 1)
- History: Fiction or Science? (Chronology, No. 1)
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